Private eye says Sherman was distracted during trial

Neil Vigdor

Updated 10:49 pm, Friday, April 19, 2013

Michael Skakel greets friends and family as he enters the courtroom on the fourth day of his habeas corpus trial at State Superior Court in Vernon, Conn., on Friday, April 19, 2013.
Photo: Jason Rearick

Frank Garr, an inspector with the State's Attorneys Office, looks over the book "Conviction: Solving the Moxley Murder A Reporter and Detective's Twenty-Year Search for Justice" while answering questions from Michael Skakel's defense attorney Hubert Santos, right, at Skakel's habeas corpus hearing at State Superior Court in Rockville, Conn., on Thursday, April 18, 2013. Garr worked on the book with the author, Leonard Levitt.
Photo: Jason Rearick

Michael Skakel motions to friends and family as he enters the courtroom after a breake in day four of his habeas corpus trial at State Superior Court in Vernon, Conn., on Friday, April 19, 2013.
Photo: Jason Rearick

Michael Skakel's defense attorney Hubert Santos approaches the witness stand to question Marjorie Hauer, who was a childhood friend of Martha Moxley and lived in the same neighborhood, at Skakel's habeas corpus trial at State Superior Court in Vernon, Conn., on Friday, April 19, 2013.
Photo: Jason Rearick

Neal Walker, a Belle Haven resident at the time of the Moxley murder, testifies at Michael Skakel's habeas corpus trial at State Superior Court in Vernon, Conn., on Friday, April 19, 2013.
Photo: Jason Rearick

Michael Skakel motions to friends and family at before leaving the courtroom at the end of day four of his habeas corpus trial at State Superior Court in Vernon, Conn., on Friday, April 19, 2013.
Photo: Jason Rearick

Michael Skakel, right, shakes the hand of his defense attorney Hubert Santos after day four of Skakel's habeas corpus trial at State Superior Court in Vernon, Conn., on Friday, April 19, 2013.
Photo: Jason Rearick

Michael Skakel, right, talks with his defense attorney Hubert Santos before leaving the courtroom after day four of Skakel's habeas corpus trial at State Superior Court in Vernon, Conn., on Friday, April 19, 2013.
Photo: Jason Rearick

VERNON -- A Stamford private eye loaned his voice Friday to the public deconstruction of Mickey Sherman by his aggrieved former client Michael Skakel, testifying that his longtime lawyer friend was brimming with confidence that the Kennedy kin would beat the rap for the 1975 murder of Greenwich teenager Martha Moxley.

"It was always an atmosphere of, `We can't lose,' " said Vito Colucci, who was hired by Sherman to locate witnesses and vet them as part of Skakel's doomed defense.

Saying it pained him to speak ill of the person who opened doors for him professionally and invited him to his wedding, Colucci characterized Sherman's frame of mind leading to Skakel's 2002 murder trial as being distracted.

"He was not the same Mickey Sherman," Colucci said.

Claiming Skakel was wrongfully convicted to 20 years to life in prison, lawyers for the nephew of Ethel Skakel Kennedy and the late Robert F. Kennedy called Colucci as a witness in their client's ongoing habeas corpus trial in state Superior Court in Vernon.

The crux of their case is that Sherman, enamored with seeing himself on television and rubbing elbows with celebrities, pooh-poohed critical evidence that would have exonerated Skakel of beating and stabbing his Belle Haven neighbor to death with a 6-iron from his mother's golf club set the night before Halloween.

Colucci testified that Sherman never followed up on a promising lead he brought to his attention when he identified two Rochester, N.Y., police officers who were familiar with the long rap sheet of Gregory Coleman. A classmate of Skakel at the Elan School, a substance abuse treatment facility in Maine, Coleman told investigators Skakel confessed to killing Moxley.

"I said, `You've got to get these guys. These are fantastic witnesses,' " Colucci said. "He said, `I'll take care of it.' That's the last I heard of it."

In the previous three days on the witness stand, Sherman insisted he did everything in his power to clear Skakel and effectively discredited Coleman, who died of a heroin overdose in 2001.

Jonathan Benedict, who led Skakel's prosecution and is now a special assistant state's attorney, downplayed the significance of Coleman's checkered past.

"Isn't it true that it's a pretty common thing for junkies to be witnesses in a criminal case?" Benedict asked Colucci.

The private detective called it an understatement.

"Greg Coleman, from everything I've read and heard, was one of the worst of the worst," Colucci said.

While he rated Sherman as a good lawyer, Colucci told current Skakel legal counsel Hubert Santos under oath that Sherman's focus wandered.

"Can I say `Hollywood?' " Colucci said.

"I feel that Mickey got so enthralled with everything outside of the lawyering that he was doing -- the television, the walking the red carpet. I think that fully took charge of his life at that point. "

"When you would go to his office, would he be constantly on the phone with the media?" Santos asked.

"Yes," Colucci said.

Marjorie Hauer, a close friend and Belle Haven neighbor of Moxley at the time of the murder, echoed the theme that Sherman ignored evidence that could have helped Skakel.

At the time Sherman was building his case, Hauer testified, she went to him with information that two men confessed to her brother's friend, Gitano "Tony" Bryant, that they killed Moxley.

"I felt this was information that Mr. Sherman would want to follow up on," said Hauer, whose maiden name is Walker.

By the time Bryant was interviewed on camera, not by Sherman but Colucci, it was 2003, well after Skakel's sentencing.

On those tapes, Bryant, the cousin of Los Angeles Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant and a Brunswick schoolmate of Skakel, told Colucci that a friend named Adolph Hasbrouck was obsessed with Moxley and bragged that he wanted to go "caveman" on her right before the murder.

The interview went on with Bryant telling Colucci he had no doubt that Burt Tinsley baited Hasbrouck into fulfilling his violent sexual fantasy.

"The story was that Tony and his two friends were at Belle Haven that night and that Tony's friends were the ones who committed the murder," said Hauer, who now resides in Darien.

Sherman found the story implausible, she added.

Running out of legal options, Skakel's current lawyers sued the state Department of Correction and are seeking judicial relief from his sentence.

A pivotal figure who helped rekindle the investigation into the famous Greenwich case also took the stand Friday, denying he had a pecuniary interest in the successful prosecution of Skakel.

Frank Garr, a longtime inspector with the Bridgeport State's Attorney's office and former Greenwich Police detective assigned to the case, testified that he was approached in 2002 by then-Newsday columnist Leonard Levitt to collaborate on a book about the murder prior to Skakel's sentencing.

"He had asked me if I would consider helping him with his book," Garr said. "I said I probably would, but not until all the proceedings were over."

Santos raised red flags about the nature of the partnership between Garr and Levitt, author of the 2004 book, "Conviction: Solving the Moxley Murder: A Reporter and a Detective's Twenty-Year Search for Justice."

He highlighted passages in the book he said shed light on a cozy relationship between Garr and Levitt, whom Santos intimated was granted special access to confidential information about the case.

"Would it be fair to say you were the mirror image of Len Levitt?" Santos said, quoting a line in the book.

Garr answered, "No."

Santos went on to quote the final two paragraphs in the book, saying it showed Garr and Levitt had a vested interest in a negative outcome for Skakel.

"For the Skakels, it's over. They just don't know it," Santos read from the book. "You and I will be there to stop them. Sometimes, I think that's what we're meant to do in this world."

Garr said he was motivated to set the record straight about the investigation in the wake of the publication of "Murder in Greenwich," a whodunit book by former Los Angeles police Detective Mark Fuhrman, of O.J. Simpson infamy.

"The inaccuracies of the way the investigation was portrayed, I felt that Mr. Levitt's book would be the most accurate and true," Garr said.

Garr said he didn't receive much compensation for helping Levitt to fact-check the book.

"Did you ever divulge to him any information from the state's file?" Benedict said.

"No," Garr said.

Levitt scoffed at the inference that he and Garr were in it for the fame and riches in an interview with Greenwich Time in the courthouse lobby.

"That's nonsense," said Levitt, who lives in Stamford. "The reason it was so important to me to write this book is you're dealing with a Greek tragedy on an epic scale. Here it was still going on after 40 years. It had nothing to do with money."

Levitt co-authored a Greenwich Time article about the Greenwich Police Department's handling of the long-unsolved murder that was published in 1991 and helped relaunch the investigation that led to Michael Skakel's arrest.

Because of the backlog of habeas corpus cases, the state's judicial branch created a special unit to adjudicate them all in the Rockville section of Vernon, which is 100 miles from Greenwich.

It might as well be Siberia for the Manhattan-based producers of "Dateline NBC" and the CBS true-crime series "48 Hours," who have been lured here by the confluence of power, privilege and America's most famous and star-crossed political clan.

Rockville's claim to fame is as the home of Gene Pitney, a singer who rose to fame in the 1960s and is immortalized at Russ's Time Rock-N-Roll Diner a block away from the courthouse where several Skakel family members regularly spend lunch breaks.

At the lunch counter, Rusty Burnett wondered if a woman in their party with wavy hair and a monogrammed blazer was a Kennedy.

A retired accountant from nearby Manchester, Burnett, 67, flocked to the courthouse to watch the trial.

"I didn't think I was going to get in," Burnett said.

Told the list of witnesses who could get called when the trial resumes next week includes Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Burnett perked up.